The Collection

Big Chief Demond Melancon entered the Black Masking Culture of New Orleans in 1992, and his practice remains inseparable from that more than 200-year-old tradition. Working exclusively with needle and thread, he hand-sews intricate compositions of glass seed beads onto canvas and into monumental ceremonial Suits — sculptural forms worn on his body that require over one million beads and more than 4,000 hours to complete. In 2012, the elders of the Black Masking community conferred upon him the title of Big Chief of the Young Seminole Hunters, the highest ceremonial role within a Mardi Gras Indian tribe. In 2017, he extended his beading practice into a contemporary art context, creating bidimensional works that draw on imagery of Black excellence and resistance — invoking figures from Haile Selassie to Ashanti and Yoruba heraldry — while honoring subjects historically excluded from the artistic canon. Self-taught, Melancon has cited Kerry James Marshall as a formative influence.

Melancon has exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum (London), Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney), International African American Museum (Charleston), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), and the Biennale of Sydney, among others. In 2026, he was one of 111 artists worldwide invited to the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia by Koyo Kouoh. His work is held in the public collections of the Gibbes Museum of Art, International African American Museum, Toledo Museum of Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, and the LSU Museum of Art. Melancon was awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship (2023) and the Gibbes Museum and Society 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art (2024).